In his autobiography, Life, the notoriously riotous Rolling Stone Keith Richards tells a story about meeting his future in-laws at then-girlfriend supermodel Patti Hansen's house on Staten Island. It is, predictably, rock 'n' roll: Richards, who had shown up with a bottle in hand and was already wasted, smashed his guitar on the family's dining-room table as Hansen crouched in tears atop a flight of stairs. This little episode took place more than 30 years ago, so today Hansen, freckled and fabulous and tucked into a booth at the Four Seasons Hotel in Manhattan, has some distance from the drama. "When I read that in the book, I was like, God, why does he have to go and dredge up that shit again?" she says, a big grin poking through her shaggy blond mane.
Since the book's publication last year, she's done her own digging. "My nephew, who is now in his 40s and was a teenager at the time, just told me he remembers exactly what happened. Somebody at the table asked for Keith to play, which he did, and then the family went on talking. So he got a little angry," says Hansen, now 55. One could assume a private concert from a Rolling Stone would at least elicit a round of applause. "In hindsight, we look back and we think, Oh, now I get it. But we were all high as a kite, and it just happened. It was another time."
Hansen's elegant nonchalance and approachable glamour have been her trademarks since she started modeling nearly 40 years ago. She's still got it too; heads turn when she saunters through the Four Seasons in a fitted knee-length Dolce & Gabbana coat and knee-high black suede boots, and she can rock a black leather dress, as she did at the launch of her Hung on U bags at Barneys in September. (The cross-body bags are inspired by her iconic '80s boho look and come in three sizes and a variety of colors and skins.) Nearly everyone I speak to about Hansen mentions her ability to handle anything—fashion, illness, a rock-star husband, her career, motherhood (to daughters Theodora, 26, and Alexandra, 25)—with a cool factor that girls today could only hope to mimic.
Cool is a word that comes up often in descriptions of Hansen. "Patti is the ultimate cool girl," Michael Kors says. "She is rock 'n' roll royalty but also incredibly down-to-earth and has one of the most genuine souls out there." Donna Karan, who has worked with Hansen since the late '80s, is equally enthusiastic: "She's been the same girl since I've known her. She's cool, she's hot, she's a mother, she's a caring and giving person. They're a deep, deep family." Barneys New York's Simon Doonan adds, "When you're as groovy as Patti, you don't need to put on airs. She's totally affable and, best of all, very unpretentious." Her daughter Theodora says simply, "She's just the coolest mom in the world."
Family has always been important in Hansen's life. Even in her wildest days, she knew she had loved ones watching over her. "I never wanted to disappoint my family at all," she says. "That's what kept me from going to the deep end. That was always in my mind." Hansen was born the last of seven kids to her bus-driver father and homemaker mother. Her nearest sibling was eight years older. Today Hansen is the family matriarch, planning holiday getaways and serving as a nucleus for a clan in triple digits. Theodora explains that when reunions get too big, they have to "pass out colored T-shirts and make teams" to keep things organized.
Hansen's career is a fashion fairy tale. Scouted at a hot-dog stand, she signed with the Wilhelmina modeling agency at the age of 16, was sent on a casting, booked the job, and has been in magazines ever since. "It was that quick," she attests. Her career highlights include Harper's Bazaar, Vogue, and Esquire covers (the men's magazine used a provocative picture of Hansen to illustrate a 1978 cover story called "The Year of the Lusty Woman"), a major Revlon deal, and a gig as the face of Calvin Klein Jeans that put her on a traffic-stopping billboard in Times Square when she was 23. To her own amusement, the girl from Staten Island became the face of American sportswear. "Everyone thinks I'm this jock of a woman, but I didn't play any sports," she says, laughing. "I didn't even let my kids play baseball because I was afraid they were going to get hit by balls."
She worked with the greats, everyone from Richard Avedon to Patrick Demarchelier. (Patrick's son Victor photographed her for this story.) "They knew exactly what they wanted," she says. "There was no hesitation. You went in, and you knew you were going to get a great photo." She adored the late Francesco Scavullo, the seminal photographer who described Hansen as the Marilyn Monroe of the '80s. "When you worked with him, you knew how you were going to sit, how it was going to be. He took this wholesome, freckle-faced kid and gave me confidence." Helmut Newton was trickier. "He was a shit," she says with a laugh, remembering that he would tease her about her fluctuating weight, "but he sure as hell knew what he was doing."
In 1979, celebrating her 23rd birthday at Studio 54, she met Keith Richards, one of the founding members of the Rolling Stones, then on a two-decade roller-coaster ride of scandalous headlines and swooning groupies. Hansen was aware of the band, but in that pre-Internet era, before everyone knew everything about everyone, she wasn't exactly the biggest fan. She knew nothing about Richards. Her closest friend, fellow model Shaun Casey, had taken her out to celebrate and couldn't get a bottle of champagne after last call, but she knew that Richards, who of course arrived long after midnight, could. Richards writes in Life that Casey "pointed out this blonde beauty dancing with wild hair flying." (Richards is full of florid explanations about meeting Hansen, including a bit where he describes himself as "over the moon and peeing in my pants.") Bottom line: He got the bottle of champagne. Hansen casually thanked him and headed back to the dance floor.
"I didn't see her again for a while, but the vision stayed in my mind," writes Richards. Nine months later, on the invitation of Jerry Hall, Hansen went to his 36th birthday party and sparks flew. "Incredibly I've found a woman. A miracle!" he continues. "She is the most beautiful specimen in the WORLD. ... It certainly helps but it's her mind, her joy of life, and she thinks this battered junkie is the guy she loves."
"Keith was constantly making me mix tapes, and he would do beautiful drawings on them," Hansen says of their courtship. "That was his method of communication." He created collages with pictures of her from magazines, Polaroids, and notes written in his own blood. "It looks disgusting when it dries, but he loves the color red," she deadpans. How would he get the blood? "Maybe he cut himself shaving?" she teases, then grimaces. "Or picked a scab?" She has kept these mementos. "I have everything in boxes. Thousands of those tapes. I've saved everything."
Hansen is cagey when it comes to divulging hedonistic antics of the '70s and '80s—she'll only smile and say, "All the myths are true"—but she does dispute the popular notion that she singlehandedly saved her husband from a path of self-destruction. "I joined in on Keith's frenzy too, remember. It was the '70s, so we can't say it was all Keith," she says, going so far as to say that the two actually saved each other. "But my mom told him that she was worried about her baby, and he told her not to worry because he'd take care of me. So, if I ever got really thin running around with him, he would take me off, put some weight on me. Keith promised my mom he would take care of me, and he did."
Richards proposed in Cabo San Lucas, Mexico, in 1983. He likes to say that Hansen was so happy, she jumped on his back and broke his toe, but today she's quick to point out that it wasn't the first time he'd asked, and it took a couple of proposals to elicit that response. He still writes her letters (and, yes, sometimes they're still in blood), but she swears their lives at home in Connecticut are completely typical. "When the girls were young, Keith would drive them to cheerleading and to their Brownies meetings," she says, creating a fantastic visual of Captain Teague, his character in the Pirates of the Caribbean movies, delivering Girl Scout cookies. "We're an old married couple."
Their union is considered one of rock 'n' roll's strongest, and they've weathered their fair share of trials. "There was a three-year period there that was really difficult for us," Hansen admits. "It was like bang, bang, bang." The first bang was her breast-cancer scare in 2005, then a frightening incident on a remote Fijian island when Richards fell as he was clambering down from a tree, resulting in blood clots in his brain. When reports surfaced that Richards had taken a tumble, most assumed it was a prank and that the unstoppable musician was dented but not broken. Hansen relates a much more urgent situation. "Here we are in the middle of nowhere in Fiji, just him and I, and he's on his deathbed. How do we get from this small island to a bigger island and then to a brain surgeon? We have to fly through a storm in some prop plane that is bouncing up and down with him locked into this bed and his head taped down, and the medics are these two kids that didn't even have an aspirin to give him for the pain ..." she says, trailing off on the story. Then she grins. "It's just amazing: His time is not up. At all."
The third bang for Hansen was bladder cancer, discovered in 2007. It was something she discussed with few people when it was diagnosed, no doubt a challenge for a woman whose nonchalance and honesty define her personality. "The breast cancer was nothing compared to the bladder cancer," she says. She found blood in her urine while at their country home in England after a tour and within a month was in chemotherapy, followed by surgery. "I told them, 'Just get the fucker out of there. Get it out, immediately.'" She's cancer free now and, at the urging of New York's Memorial Sloan-Kettering Cancer Center, has found a new calling in raising awareness for the disease.
Cancer. A life-threatening brain injury. A fast past and a rock 'n' roll lifestyle. And Hansen and Richards are still around and still in love. Are they immortal? She laughs, flashing her blue eyes. "I guess we've beaten what takes out most people."
